not my intention
by rockingfreakshow
Summary: Rachel's parents forget her birthday again. Drabble, Percy/Rachel friendship, post-BotL.


**disclaimer: **disclaimed

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Rachel's birthday rolls around and she comes to discover her parents don't even remember it. _For the third year running. _She wasn't really sure what she expected, on one hand it was her 16th birthday - kind of a significant event in her life, but on the other, when have they ever cared? It's 9am on a Saturday morning and all she's given for the day is solitude and a careless post-it note from her dad telling her her parents are both working graveyard and to feed herself. It stings. Hard.

She wanders the snow-covered streets of New York aimlessly for a few hours, trying to find anything to distract herself from the constant reminder of the fact that her parents don't give a shit about her. She hasn't eaten since she got up, and she doesn't want to; she's too sad, too angry. Sat on a park bench, she notices a little girl with her father. They look so happy, and she finds herself so overwhelmingly envious of the honest love in the fathers eyes for his child. She sighs and looks down, fiddles with the rips in her jeans, trying not to cry - she's not gonna cry over this, she tells herself. Not again. She decides that this is pointless and is just making her feel worse, so she drags herself back home.

As she climbs up the seemingly endless sets of stairs to her apartment (she refuses to let her personal sadness interfere with her reluctance to take the elevator, as stairs are better for your health and the environment, two things Rachel cares about preserving) she feels tears well up in her eyes and she doesn't even try to stop them as they run down her cheeks. It's just _so_ _fucking unfair. _Why did she have to be born to such shitty parents? Who the_ fuck_ forgets their own kids birthday, _multiple times_?

She storms around the corner, to her surprise sees a familiar raven-haired boy stood at the end of the corridor, outside her door. He sees her, waves and smiles, runs down the corridor to catch up to her.

"Hey Rach! Where've you been, I- woah, wait, what's wrong?"

The genuine concern in his eyes feels strange to her.

She quickly wipes her face with the back of her hand. "What, nothing, I'm fine, what're you doing here?" she smiles for the first time that day. It's honestly so good to see him.

"Cos it's your birthday, duh!" he replies. It takes her aback. No ones remembered her birthday in three years.

"You remembered?!" she exclaims, grinning even still when confusion sets in, "wait, what the actual hell, Percy? When did I even tell you when my birthday is?"

"Uh, you told me that time in Maths when we were trying to work out who the oldest person in our class is," he says, as if it's the most casual thing in the world, which to him it probably is.

It's almost funny, in a bittersweet kinda way. 16 years ago, her mom literally pushed her out of her body and she doesn't remember her birthday, yet Percy, with his shockingly bad attention span and memory, remembers it from an indirect comment she made in a dumb 5 minute conversation they had two months ago. It means so much more to Rachel than Percy would ever be able to understand. All the anger and sadness she felt just a few seconds earlier seems to melt away. She throws her arms around him, and he laughs and returns the hug, slightly confused.

"Percy! I can't believe you remembered!"

"What makes you think forget your birthday?!" he laughs.

"Well, my parents did." she regrets bringing it up right after she's said it.

"What?! Oh man, that's awful Rachel..." his eyebrows furrow in sympathy and confusion.

She shrugs, sighs. "It's fine. They always do."

"Wait, is that why you were.."

"What? No, no, I'm fine, don't worry"

She feels kinda bad for lying to him, but he gets distracted for probably the ten thousand millionth time in his life, and forgets to question her further, inadvertantly drawing her mind away from her parents, which she's later grateful for.

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**a/n: **i might revise this later i just wrote it in like 8 minutes and didnt put much into it :/ this drabble thing is just friendship really, but oh the struggle i face being a perachel shipper.. theyre my fav pairing and always have been but ive been too scared to write about them for years cos no one sees the beauty of perachel that i see lmao pls dont send me hate im just a simple girl with simple dreams


End file.
